it's past midnight so i apologise if
things don't quite make sense ;-;
~
You woke up feeling incomplete.
Fragile. Broken. As if you'd been smashed to pieces and glued back together again with things in the wrong places.
"How the fuck am I still alive?" You muttered with a groan, turning your head to find Chuuya blinking at you with a drowsy smile. His eyes were still hazy, as if he'd just woken up.
"You tell me," he responded, shaking his orange-brown bangs over his eyes. "I thought you'd died during the night."
"Yet you still stayed," you pointed out, lifting your lips into a feeble smirk-turned-grimace. "Ugh, shit." You doubled over with a sudden shock of pain that erupted everywhere at once.
"Hey - don't strain yourself too much," Chuuya warned you offhandedly, flicking a speck of dust from the collar of his coat. He glanced up as you groaned again; every movement threw you thrashing under a new wave of pain. "Uhm, you doing okay over there?"
"Fucking brilliant," you forced through gritted teeth, easing yourself back against the headrest with laboured breaths. Chuuya stayed quiet for a long moment, taking his chin between his hands with a contemplative frown. Once the pain in your chest had abated to a more bearable ache, you lifted your eyes to meet the executive's, speaking in a hushed voice. "Where's Akutagawa?"
Chuuya gave a snort, pressing his hands against his kneecaps and leaning forward in his seat. "After all that's happened you're still asking after that angst brat?"
You dropped your gaze, toying absentmindedly with the hem of your shirt. The bandage around your chest was tight, restricting your lung capacity and it making it difficult to suck in enough air. Though you ought to be thankful you were still able to breath at all. Whoever had fixed you up had done a damn good job at keeping you alive.
"He's not here," Chuuya replied after a long moment, shrugging loosely. "I don't know where he went, but he left yesterday. You'd have to look for him yourself."
You groaned under your breath, pushing the covers off your body and manoeuvring yourself over the edge of the bed. "I suppose I will then."
Chuuya rocketed out of his chair in a blur, pinning his arms either side of you to trap you against the bed. "Woah, I was only joking. You're not well enough to get up yet."
You planted your hands firmly on his chest and pushed him away with a dark scowl. "I'm fine, so get off me, Chuuya."
"You can't go out like this," he insisted, blocking your arm again.
"Since when did you care?"
Chuuya's face darkened, shadows prowling along his cheeks. Sharp canines were exposed as he bared his teeth. "Since Akutagawa asked the ADA to help save you."
Your breath fell short of your lips as you struggled to comprehend his words. "What? He... what?"
Chuuya's nose twitched as he set his jaw forward, seemingly reluctant to explain. "The agency has an ability user who's able to heal fatal wounds. It was obvious you were going to die, so Akutagawa went to the President for permission. I don't know what he said, but he somehow agreed." He shook his head and cursed loudly under his breath. "Liasing with the fucking enemy; what the hell was he thinking?"
He went all that way to save me?
The red-head moved away from you, straightening out his jacket. "Damn right he did," he replied, taking you by surprise. Had you said that aloud? "So you can't say you don't mean anything to him anymore. It's more than he would've done for any of us."
You swallowed nervously, your chest starting to hurt again. This time, it wasn't because of your wound. "And the agency just... agreed?"
Chuuya rolled his eyes, waving a hand over his shoulder. "That little tiger brat convinced them. You must really have some charm that I'm not seeing or something 'cus you've got all these men-"
The rest of his words were drowned out beneath the strumming of blood in your ears.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke.
Just what the hell was he thinking?
~
"You're still not strong enough to leave."
"I've rested for an entire week, Chuuya. And in that time, Akutagawa still hasn't come back. I'm going to look for him," you said in a finalising tone, shrugging on your jacket with clumsy movements.
Chuuya reached for your arm, taking it in a rough hold. "He always wanders off like this. Why do you want to see him so bad, anyway?"
You shot him a deadpan look. "He went to the agency begging for my life. I want to know why the hell he did it." You shook him off, knocking past with your face twisted with a scowl.
"[Y/N], listen to me-"
"Fuck off," you spat, clipping a gun to your belt. "And don't follow me."
***
"How did you find me?"
You laughed wryly, the noise sounding harsh against the silence of the slums. "Where else would you be?" You replied, mirroring his dismal tone. "I figured you'd be in a sentimental mood."
You ducked under a piece of overhanging guttering, dripping water into a murky puddle below, and approached him with a hard stare. He didn't bother to look at you, fixing his eyes in a downcast glare with his hands stowed away in his pockets.
"When was the last time you ate? Or slept?" You asked, hoisting yourself onto the wall next to him. His skin was ashen, haunted by thick shadows that sucked the colour from his face, eyes listless and empty. The veins stood out on his jawline, giving his skin a bluish tinge, and his cheeks were sunken and gaunt. He looked like death. "You're not well, Akutagawa."
"I'm fine," he said peevishly. "You shouldn't be here, [Y/N]. You're not-"
"Well enough, I know, I know," you finished with a bitter sigh, rubbing your knuckles against your thighs. "Chuuya... told me what you did."
Akutagawa turned away, his lips paling. "You want to know why?" His words painted the air with ghostly shapes.
"Naturally."
He clicked his tongue, reaching up to brush a piece of hair out of his face. His answer came sooner than expected. "I don't know."
You shot him a sidelong glance, sucking in your cheeks with exasperation. "You don't know? Well isn't that a fucking great answer-"
"Shut up, [Y/N]. Don't make me regret it."
You gritted your teeth suddenly, playing with a thread on your jacket to distract yourself from the burning sensation in your chest. "Did you do it because you... I don't know, cared?" You asked tentatively. "Or because you felt inclined to?"
Akutagawa twisted his body so that he was facing you completely. Now you had nowhere to run, nowhere to go other than straight into those listless black eyes. "[Y/N]-" he bit his tongue, his eyes shifting down to your lips, before meeting your gaze again. Your heart spiked. "I did care for you, at a time in our past. When we were living as slum rats, when we were surviving off each other, relying on each other. We stuck together – we were partners back then," he said, his voice strangled as he admitted all the things that had been tearing you apart seam by seam as you waited for the words to fall out of his mouth, hear his version of things. "But things change. People change. We outgrew one another-"
"Outgrew one another?" You echoed in a disbelieving whisper. "That's what you think happened?"
"I never saw you that way," he continued, dismissing your interruption as you tore your eyes from his. "I'm sorry. I never meant for you to..."
He couldn't even say it. He couldn't say the damn word.
"Love you?" You finished with a venomous laugh. "Yeah, me neither. But these things just happen, right?"
There were no words to describe your emotions for this man. People always said they was a thin line between love and hate, and at the moment it was all blurring into one. He would never understand the pain he'd put you through. How could he, when he had no heart of his own?
You'd been wounded before, many times – more than you could count. It was part of the job, an occupational hazard.
But this was different.
This was a bullet straight to the heart.
A wound that could never be stitched, never be healed, never be forgotten.
A wound that wasn't enough to kill you, but left you feeling dead inside.
Thus was the pain of unrequited love.